The Uncanny

 The other day, I was listening to a podcast revisiting the history of the "Slenderman" moral panic—from the earlier days of the internet. One of the hosts of the episode observed in passing that one of the reasons why this fictional character was so effectively creepy was that there was something instantly "familiar" about him, as soon as you saw him. 

This reminded me of a stray observation Freud makes in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego—namely, that the essence of the "uncanny" is always both to be at once strange—yet strangely familiar. "[T]he characteristic of uncanniness suggests something old and familiar that has undergone repression," as Freud puts it. (Strachey trans.)

This suggested to me in turn that it was time to get around to reading Freud's classic essay on the phenomenon of "the Uncanny," in which he explores the concept in greater detail. 

The essence of Freud's theory is that we experience things as uncanny when they remind us of a certain magical or animistic view of the world which we once held as children—but which we have since struggled to repress and outgrow.

Thus, we experience a tingle of the "eerie" when we encounter strange and seemingly meaningful coincidences—the "synchronicities" of Carl Jung's theory. Or when we seem to have a premonition of something that later comes to pass. 

Such episodes—according to Freud—make us uncomfortable because they confirm a picture of the universe that we have all—in adulthood—tried to suppress: the magical view of the universe; according to which mere thoughts have the power on their own to affect things: the world, as Freud puts it, of "the omnipotence of thoughts." (McLintock trans.)

The reason why we experience fear when we encounter the "uncanny"—then—is that we feel haunted by something we once knew intimately, but which we thought we had successfully managed to bury in our subconscious. And now, here it comes again, like a revenant, struggling up from the basements of our minds. 

"I thought I finally overcame the belief that my thoughts alone could affect reality—and now, here's something that leads me to suspect—however momentarily—that it's all true after all?"

This explains why the things we find uncanny are at once both foreign and familiar to us. Foreign—because we have banished and disavowed them; familiar—because they were the daily companions of our childhood. 

(Freud points out that the German terms for the concept of the "uncanny" betray this fundamental ambivalence even more clearly—both the concepts for "homelike" and "unhomelike" in German can carry the connotation of uncanniness.)

If Freud's theory of repression is correct—this goes some length to explaining as well why we all feel a vague sense of guilt about indulging in the uncanny—why literature with supernatural elements, say, has always been demoted to being one of the mere "genres"—denied privileges status as "serious literature," that is to say—why it was only, that is, when the novel as a whole was treated as an unserious genre, in its early history, that the default form of the novel was a supernatural Gothic mystery. 

I confess that I myself like to indulge in a paranormal podcast of an evening—but note that this is something I have to confess; and I view it as an "indulgence"—something with which I am permitted to reward myself only after having completed all my intellectual chores for the day. 

I know that I am indulging, after all, in an aspect of the childhood worldview that I was supposed to have repressed and grown out of. That's why the pleasure of these podcasts is always—to most of us—a "guilty" pleasure. 

(I suspect this is also why Freud, in the midst of writing his classic account of the "Uncanny," feels the need to preface his essay by a disavowal of the emotion. He insists that, of all people, he is just about the least susceptible to the sense of the uncanny. Hmm—really? Or does the Doktor perhaps protest too much? 

After all—Freud of all people should know that the thing we are at greatest pains to disavow is probably more closely connected to us than we want to acknowledge. (One gets a similar impression from the passage in the essay in which Freud describes walking accidentally into a red light district in an unknown city; tries to turn himself around; but keeps ending up back in the same neighborhood over and over again.))

But wait a minute—you may protest—aren't there whole genres devoted to "magical thinking"—fantasy, say, or the fairy tale—that arouse no feelings of fear or eeriness? 

Freud considers this objection; and he has a good response to it: the reason we don't experience a sense of the uncanny or of dread when we read fairy tales is that they are set in a world in which we all already expect the animistic rules of the childlike magical universe to apply. We are psychologically prepared to find these "familiar" but disavowed elements—and therefore do not fear them. 

It is only when these "familiar" aspects of a previously-transcended worldview overtake us in an unexpected place—the sane, normal, rationalistic world of everyday life—that they inspire fear. 

An old childhood toy we find because we went looking for it in the attic, say, is always going to be less frightening and uncanny than one that suddenly appears unbidden on a kitchen shelf. 

Thus, Freud's concept of the "uncanny" has some features in common with Todorov's theory of the "fantastic"—which he distinguishes from fantasy proper. For Todorov, the telling mark of "fantastic" literature is that it maintains the reader in a state of suspense between the sane, rationalistic world of adulthood, and the animistic, magical world of childhood. One isn't sure in which one finds oneself. 

This also explains why supernatural literature—as H.P. Lovecraft pointed out in a classic essay on the subject—is always most effective when it is written by people who are consciously committed to a rationalistic worldview, as opposed to people who are convinced believers in spiritualism and the occult.

The same holds for paranormal podcasts. The average paranormal podcast out there created by people who naïvely believe in ghosts and spirits bores me. They are like the narrator of a fairy tale. They announce up front that they live in an animistic universe. So, there is no tension within what they have to describe. 

It is only the podcasts hosted by people who are fact-based enough to introduce skeptical counter-arguments and a dose of rationalistic criticism or doubt that are able to effectively maintain an atmosphere of the eerie (my current favorite being Kaelyn Moore's Heart Starts Pounding). These podcasts—unlike the New Age ones—generally inhabit a rationalistic adult world—but one into which the suppressed childhood animism always threatens to erupt. The essence of the Freudian uncanny. 

Freud's theory also helps me to understand why certain horror media is more effective than others at inspiring genuine fear. 

I consider myself a minor fan of auteur horror. I don't pretend to an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre—but I know enough to say that not all of it works on me. And almost none of it keeps me up at night. 

With one exception: the 2008 Australian film Lake Mungo. This is undoubtedly the most effective horror film I've ever seen; and it was the first one in years I actually lost sleep over. 

I had no theory at the time I saw it—earlier this summer—to account for why it is so uncanny. But with Freud's concepts in hand, I can begin to make sense of its emotional power. 

Above all, the film is effective in maintaining Todorov's sense of tension. Its format—that of a fictional "found footage" documentary—is already a good vehicle for creating a sense of realism—and therefore, an impression, when we start the film, that we are still supposed to be inhabiting the rationalistic scientific adult world; rather than the fairy tale world of animism and of the "omnipotence of thoughts." 

Moreover, (hopefully without giving too many spoilers; but read no further if you want none) the film retains and heightens this tension by repeatedly changing the dominant paradigm through which we are meant to perceive events—what seems to be a series of supernatural occurrences is revealed to be a rationally-explicable hoax; but then another set of supernatural events begins. 

But undoubtedly the most powerful frame of the entire film occurs toward the end—when the film gives us what is probably the most genuinely terrifying "jump scare" of all time. 

Why does it work so well? Probably because it combines in a single unbidden image (you'll have to watch the film to understand what it is) every element of the repressed animistic universe that Freud describes—the childhood belief in premonitions; in fate and the "meaningful coincidence" dominating over mere chance and randomness; in the "double" or "evil twin" of the self on whom the child projects their antisocial impulses; and in the eternal life of the dead. 

But what about Slenderman, then—with whom we began? What makes him so scary? 

I know what Freud would say. I find this part of the theory slightly more risible and hard to believe—but Freud would no doubt say that's just because I have repressed the insight myself to the unconscious level and feel the need to disavow it in order to escape my fear of retrogressing.) 

Freud would say that Slenderman represents the child's externalized fear of the father figure—and that his reputation for abducting people reflects the child's fear of castration. 

Sure; maybe. Or maybe—just maybe—people fear being abducted because it is intrinsically frightening—rather than because it symbolizes the loss of the genitalia—just as we fear being devoured by wild animals or other methods of violent death? 

And indeed, at the end of his essay—for once—Freud countenances the possibility that some things in the domain of horror are pretty much what they seem. He confronts the counter-argument, at last, that his theory does not account all that clearly for why we also associate the sense of the uncanny with "solitude, silence and darkness." To this, Freud admits that maybe these have something to do merely with "infantile anxiety." 

Some things—in other words—might just be scary.